AT&T plans to sell the devices for $150, giving you the privilege of using the bandwidth you pay for -- cable modem, DSL, whatever -- to make up for AT&T's unreliable service. (I've been testing a review unit for a few weeks, and it works as promised. For the first time, I can use my cellphone in my ground-floor Brooklyn apartment. I might even buy one when they go on sale here.)

But here's how AT&T is screwing you.

It's counting any mobile data you use -- over the 3G Micro-Cell, over YOURbroadbandconnection -- toward your monthly AT&T wireless bandwidth cap and overage fees. (This was mentioned in several publications recently, including Broadband Reports, but appears to have been first discovered by Current Analysis research director Peter Jarich.)

AT&T explains the practice by saying there is a cost to handle the data transmission once it hits AT&T's network, after it goes through your broadband pipe. (Likewise, it charges you for the voice minutes that you use over the Micro-Cell. But that's a different service.)

Perhaps this is true, that a cost exists, but there's NO WAY that transmitting data over AT&T's massive fiber network is nearly as expensive or laborious as transmitting data over its wireless network, which was the whole point for the wireless data caps and overage fees.

For AT&T to charge its wireless customers a second time for bandwidth that they're already paying their broadband company for is highway robbery and just plain insulting. In reality, AT&T should be paying YOU for the bandwidth it's borrowing to make up for the fact that it can't build out its wireless network fast enough.

There is simply no excuse for this policy, and it's precisely the kind of B.S. that makes people HATE telecom companies.